How to effectively market conferences

[MarkStrobel3367]

For the past several years, I presented a school bullying/violence prevention conference to k-12 educators across the USA. I would contract with a hotel venue renting
a meeting room to seat 30 to 40 educators classroom style. I advertised by sending emails to educators in the targeted area, submitting the conference to online
directories, and emailing press releases to the local media. Using this advertising approach, filling seats has been a hit or miss. As of late, I tried running a
Facebook ad with limited to no success. Because of school email spam filters and educators possibly discarding the email as spam, I am finding email marketing to be
less effective. I am currently searching for a different and more effective form of advertising. Does anyone having any suggestions as to how I could effectively market to k-12 educators? Thanks.

 

[BoostAffiliates9]

Hi Mark,

It seems like the K-12 educators would be hanging out in forums like these, so that might be a good place to reach your target audience. I personally like to join groups in Linkedin and now I have found Google+ is a great way to enhance your "social circles", literally.

There is such a need for what you are offering, it seems like you might be able to hone it down to groups specifically taking action to educate students, teachers and administrators about bullying. What about educational conference forums prior to the event?

There are a ton of really good You Tube videos on the subject and you might find some contacts by reading the comments and subscribing to channels. Really right now media is the way to go with your efforts to optimize your reach. Hope I got close to what you were looking for. Thanks for fighting the Good Fight.

 

[MarkStrobel3367]

Hi Erin. Thank you so much for your response. Sadly, some of my forum accounts were deleted by the administrator soon after I mentioned anything pertaining to a conference I was promoting. I, like you, felt that forums would be a great place to inform educators, but this apparently is seen as unwanted solicitation.

 

[Joozed]

Hi Mark,

One idea might be to build a list of all the conferences and seminars related to your niche and try to get speaking engagements at them. By building a network of those with similar interests and success might open up new opportunities. Maybe also look into seeing if there are any local govt grants for this type of program. Maybe you could also set up a crowd funding campaign to create some kind of teaching dvd or something similar like an app or something. When I feel stuck sometimes I like to try and think and do things outside the box a bit as you never know what it will lead to.

 

[MarkStrobel3367]

Thank you so much for your response and insight!